Page 175

I unfasten his belt and work the button free, then slide my palm down the front of his pants and feel him hard and heavy against my hand. His breath catches, and his fingers curl around my wrist, not pulling me away, just holding on.

"You're going to kill me," he says.

"Eventually." I stroke him once, slow, root to tip. "Not tonight."

I push his pants down, and he steps out of them while I pull my sweater over my head. His hands follow the fabric up, and his palms skim my ribcage, thumbs tracing the wire of my bra before he reaches behind me and unclasps it with one hand. The bra falls between us, and he cups both breasts, rolling my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers until my forehead drops against his collarbone.

"I've been thinking about these since dinner." He bends and takes one nipple into his mouth, tongue circling in a slow, wet rhythm that makes my knees buckle. His hand keeps working the other, pinching and pulling gently, and the dual sensation runs straight between my legs.

He walks me backward until my calves hit the mattress. I sit, then slide back toward the pillows, and he follows, climbing over me with his weight balanced on his forearms. His mouth traces a line from my breast to my collarbone to my jaw, and I turn my head and catch his lower lip between my teeth.

"Stop being careful with me," I say against his mouth.

"I'm being thorough."

"You're being slow."

His lips curve against mine. "You used to like slow."

I remember. I remember him taking an hour to undress me in a Moscow hotel room, kissing every piece of skin he uncovered while I shook beneath his hands. The memory aches in a place I've been trying to keep locked, and I pull him down and kiss him hard enough to wipe the patience off his face.

He responds. His tongue pushes into my mouth, and his hand slides into my hair and grips, pulling my head back until my throat is exposed. He kisses the line of my neck, bites gently above my collarbone, then sucks hard enough that I'll find the mark tomorrow.

"Mine," he says against my pulse.

“Because I chose you.”

“Always.”

His hand leaves my hair and travels down my body, fingers tracing the dip of my waist and the curve of my hip. He unzips my skirt and pulls it down my legs along with my underwear, and the night air hits my bare skin for a second before his body covers mine again. I can feel the full length of him pressed against my stomach, hot and hard and already slick at the tip.

He shifts lower. His mouth moves down my body, lips dragging across my ribs, tongue circling my navel, hands gripping my hipbones while his breath ghosts across the skin below. My thighs fall open for him, and he settles between them with his shoulders pushing my legs wider.

I grip the sheets. "Alexei."

"I've been thinking about this for far too long." He presses an open-mouthed kiss to the inside of my thigh, and the muscle jumps beneath his lips.

"Are you?"

"Every time." Another kiss, higher, closer. "Even when I was on enough medication to hallucinate, and I still couldn't stop thinking about your legs around my head."

I laugh, breathless and shaky, and the sound turns into a gasp when his mouth finds me. He starts with one long, slow stroke of his tongue from bottom to top, and the flat of it presses against my clit in a way that makes my hips buck off the mattress. His hands grip my thighs and pin them down, and he does it again, slower, tasting every fold of skin before settling into a rhythm that's devastating in its precision.

My hands fly to his hair. I grip hard enough to hurt, and he groans against me, and the vibration of it travels through my clit and up my spine. His tongue circles, then flattens, then circles again, switching between sensations fast enough to keep my body from adjusting to any single one.

"Don't stop." My voice is wrecked. "Right there, don't stop."

He doesn't. He seals his lips around my clit and sucks gently while his tongue works underneath, and two fingers push inside me in a slow, curling stroke that finds the spot he's already mapped with his cock in previous nights. My back arches off the mattress, and my thighs clamp around his ears, and the pressure builds so fast I can barely breathe.

"Let go," he says against me, and the words are muffled by my body but I hear them.

I come against his mouth in a wave that locks every muscle from my toes to my jaw. His fingers keep moving inside me, curling and pressing while his tongue works me through it, and I ride his face through the aftershocks until my body goes limp against the sheets.

He presses one last kiss to my inner thigh and lifts his head. His mouth is wet and swollen, and his eyes are so dark they look black in the lamplight. He wipes his chin with the back of his hand and moves up my body, and I can feel his cock dragging against my leg, hard and insistent.

"Good?" he asks.

I grab his jaw and pull his mouth to mine. I can taste myself on his tongue, and the intimacy of it sends another pulse of heat through my core. I bite his lower lip, and he groans into my mouth, and his hips press forward, sliding himself through the wetness between my legs without pushing inside.